At the heart of Buddhism there is no God, as Bill M said. I'm thinking that you don't know what there is instead. Buddhists believe in an ultimate oneness, not in a sentient God. When a Buddhist strives towards selflessness it does not neccessarily mean "helping others in a selfless manner" as Christians would do, but literally being without a self. See, the ultimate objective is to escape the pattern of life and be reunited with the oneness, which is not a God at all.

Actually, in Buddhism, Gods are considered to still be another part of the rat race that is trying to ultimately escape like humans, almost like just another level of incarnation. They are closer to humans than they are to being truely supreme beings. And oftentimes any Gods acknowledged in Hinduism or Buddhism are really just "manifestations" of all the different facets of life and the universe.

Quote:(Christianity, Islam, etc.). I believe that these two groups had different origins, one being resultant of our evolution into our present species, and the other resultant of the mass expansion of a single culture: ours.

This however I do not agree. I believe that the gods that Egyptians severed made up the oldest religion on earth. Just as in my biology class in high school, they told me they think our common ancestries came from Africa. Seeing as some historians date thousands of years BC to the Egyptians, I truly believe they are the oldest civilization on earth. The King James Bible or the Christian Bible itself, as much as I hate it, tells a great theory of man's existence throughout the ages. I like to interpret it as more of a history book than a story book. The Old Testament where genesis comes from is taken from the Hebrew scrolls called the Torah, and various other collections of Hebrew writings. The bible first starts out with it's hocus pocus bullshit story of how God created the earth, but after that says something useful. It talks about Mesopotamia and the tribes of Israel(Israel was not even in existence yet) and how they were starving. Groups of the Jews went into Egypt to get food, but became enslaved. Eventually the Egyptians enslaved the Jews. Then you have Moses freeing from them, crossing a river and wandering through the desert till he gets to a spot along the Mediterranean sea. This is where Israel is founded. Now aside from all the other crap that takes place in the bible, these locations suggest that the Jews and the Egyptians co-existed because they ran into each other. When Jesus was born in Jerusalem in Israel he went through his little rebellion against the Jews and King Herod for breaking the Sabbath Laws and they killed him for it. Claiming relevance to being the son of God he founded Christianity. That alone says that all of Christianity had at least the basis of Judaism. The Romans existed at the time Christianity was mad because they conquered Jerusalem before Jesus was born. It is very possible the religions of India, China, and Russia were also established before Christianity from Jews or other people that migrated out of Africa spreading over the world. Nevertheless traces of the Judaism scrolls and writings from Christianity have been found in the Muslim bible called the Quran. This leads me to believe that Christians and Muslims are both descendants of the Jews as many other theologians agree. Yahweh was the Jewish name for their deity, God was the Christian name, and now the Muslims call it Allah. Same deity, different rules.

I do agree that the Muslims stayed in Europe while the Christians(the bulk of our ancestors) migrated to North America, but we do have a common origin.

Aside from that, reasoning for the origins of religion are pretty much made for control over people. Those who were organized with reading and writing, that could speak the same languages, could use it to dictate reasoning to the people to explain the so called phenomena you speak of. One reason I believe the laws were first written down was because one man could not dictate enough to the people what to do in disputes. Moses went up into Mount Sinai, with his priests and scribes, and came down with his ten commandments. The reason was because everyone kept asking him what to do, where to get food and water while they were wondering through the desert. He claimed higher authority to God so people would listen to him and follow the laws. When one religion was not good enough for the people, and they thought they could do better, they moved on and made a new one. Even Satanism itself sets “Statements”, “Rules”, and “Sins”. It explains the “phenomena” as being “dark forces”. Sure Bill was right in saying that not all religions have to have a deity, but I would say that the earliest religions were based upon gods. At least the ones we have with definite recorded history are. Look at many states such as Italy today, where there is still no separation of Church and state. They are the hierarchy of the sheep ruled by the Vatican Catholic Church. It is pretty much the same way with Christianity and America anyway with our bullshit “Ethical Policies”(completely biased toward Christianity). I am fucking sick of living in a “nation under God” with “God given rights”. So there you have my argument. Religion was made for control.

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"Satanists are epicurean, skeptical atheists who see Satan as a symbol of pride, individualism, and the quality of questioning all dogmas. The word in Hebrew means 'adversary' and so we are each 'Satans' to the doctrines that would have people use faith instead of reason to understand the universe in which we live. Our goal is to enjoy this, the only life we have and not waste it in anticipation of a mythical afterlife or an imagined apocalypse." - News 31 May, XLI A.S. in Reguards to The Satanic High Mass that happened on 6/6/6

>>I however do not see it possible for any egalitarian nor >>self-less based religion to be deity-less principled.

Then I suggest researching Therevada Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Jainism, subsets of Unitarian-Universalism, or even the Star Wars movie series. Not every "higher power", let alone every remotely metaphysical concept, is necessarily tied to a deity. Ya gotta stop thinking in terms of the religion your parents exposed you to.

Quote: Groups of the Jews went into Egypt to get food, but became enslaved. Eventually the Egyptians enslaved the Jews. Then you have Moses freeing from them, crossing a river and wandering through the desert till he gets to a spot along the Mediterranean sea.

I don’t think the Jews even wandered close to Egyptian territory... it's all fairy tales. Moses? There is more evidence of a Historical Mickey Mouse than a Moses.

I know this doesn't ad to the point of this topics. I just wanted to warn you about interpreting mythology as history.

Remember the Bible contains equal amounts of History, Fact and Pizza.

_________________________You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.Robert A. Heinlein

Quote:You might want to do some more research. You have some noticeable errors here in your post.

Oh that is very descriptive. You must be a better theologian than I am cause obviously you've done so much more research than me on this topic. With all your omnipotence you can just sense that I have some errors, which you don't care to point out. Very intelligent reply, thanks I will go back and collect myself on the reasearch I've spent my whole life on.

Quote: I don’t think the Jews even wandered close to Egyptian territory... it's all fairy tales. Moses? There is more evidence of a Historical Mickey Mouse than a Moses

Quote: Obviously, the first order of business is a countersuit by the Jews against the Egyptians. True, the Jews took a lot of gold and silver from the Egyptians, but the Egyptians, after all, had enslaved them for 430 years. The Jews should at least be entitled to lost wages for a few centuries’ hard work.

Now I know not to inturrpret all the things that happened in the Xtian bible as true. Obviously the bulk of it is bullshit; however, there were a few events such as the great flood etc. that did actually happen in real life. It is all there in the history books, but I'm not going to go through the trouble of picking through volumes and volumes of information just for one post of my two cents. The characters in the bible and the places they travel to are actual real places on earth : The garden of Eden, river of Jordan, Babylon , etc. Doesn't mean the stories true, but some of the stories make odd sense and actually concur with what some historians believe to be true. Just the way that some of the Jewish tribes migrated around concur with some of the old landmarks found in the middle east today.

This is not Noxilenticus's preach the bible post. It was simply just an educated guess and where the white light religions came from. My point being that given the information I gave, the Xtians and Muslims have the same ancestors : The Jews.

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"Satanists are epicurean, skeptical atheists who see Satan as a symbol of pride, individualism, and the quality of questioning all dogmas. The word in Hebrew means 'adversary' and so we are each 'Satans' to the doctrines that would have people use faith instead of reason to understand the universe in which we live. Our goal is to enjoy this, the only life we have and not waste it in anticipation of a mythical afterlife or an imagined apocalypse." - News 31 May, XLI A.S. in Reguards to The Satanic High Mass that happened on 6/6/6

It has been historically proven than there was never a large Hebrew population living in Egypt in the times of the Pharaohs. And even if a bunch of them lived there, they weren’t prisoners who needed to escape. The whole thing is a myth.

Slavery was not an important part of Ancient Egyptian culture. Rich people owned other Egyptians as slaves and servants, but the concept of a “slave race” didn’t exist.

Keeping an entire population captive as slaves would be absurd and even counterproductive in Egypt, where the Pharaoh could just re-route of the entire country workforce to his pet construction projects during flood time. (Jews building pyramids for the Pharaoh, that’s another myth, this time %100 Hollywood-made)

Archaeological evidence shows those tribes didn’t come from Egypt across the dessert. They lived in the same territory for several generations until they unified and started calling themselves Hebrews.

There is even a documentary where some famous Archeologists talk about this evidence, and mention the political and religious dilemma that this discovery implies, since it officially proves wrong one of the most famous passages of the Bible.

_________________________You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.Robert A. Heinlein

No offense, but do you have any sources? Because this is not what I have read, and I have looked for it for a good hour.

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"Satanists are epicurean, skeptical atheists who see Satan as a symbol of pride, individualism, and the quality of questioning all dogmas. The word in Hebrew means 'adversary' and so we are each 'Satans' to the doctrines that would have people use faith instead of reason to understand the universe in which we live. Our goal is to enjoy this, the only life we have and not waste it in anticipation of a mythical afterlife or an imagined apocalypse." - News 31 May, XLI A.S. in Reguards to The Satanic High Mass that happened on 6/6/6

"As I have stated, the paradox where more people are "talking" dark forces up, down, and sideways, but fewer than ever are actually living as night people, provokes speculation. The moral here is that when everybody's talking, very few are doing. More time is spent comparing notes with aficionados than in enjoying the hobby per se."A.S.L. / T.D.N.

This is not just a recent thing for me. For some reason I was fascinated with the Egyptians as a child and I began studying them when I was 4 years old. I was amazed at how gaudy they were. I loved all their possessions and the fact that they would bury their dead in gold sarcophagus’s and masks. One particular Pharaoh that has always been my favorite since a child was king Tutankhamun. I have always admired his lovely gold burial mask. I want to own it some day. He was murdered(they think) when he was 19 years old. Getting back to the point, the Predynastic Egypt was dated by wikipedia at 3500 BC. That was 5506 years ago. If you click on the hyperlink you can also scroll down the bottom of the page where it talks about the timeline of the history of mankind.

Also if you look at pharaoh Ramesses II's profile on wikipedia you will see that he was a leader of the Hittites. The Jews claim the Hittites in this passage as if they were their own in the old testament book of exodus. This is why I believe they were with the Jews and that the Egyptians kept them as slaves. The Hittites did have a war, which it talks about in Ramesses II’s profile that resulted in a peace treaty. Wars do not happen because everything is going great.

As far as this :

Quote: It is very possible the religions of India, China, and Russia were also established before Christianity from Jews or other people that migrated out of Africa spreading over the world.

Well as far as that goes you can look at this article. It dates some Chinese writings back to tombs 4500-2500BC.

Quote: The pottery inscriptions, they said, reflect sacrificial rites at that time, just as other ancient writings did. For example, the pictograph "nan" looks like people forming an altar to worship a young tree, signifying the rite of praying to the god of the land for good harvests.

This makes them possibly even older theists than the Egyptians. All I know is that the Egyptians are much more well known in our culture than any other so that is why my guess resides with them.

The Mask of Pharaoh Tutankhamun

Hail King TuT!Hail Satan!

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"Satanists are epicurean, skeptical atheists who see Satan as a symbol of pride, individualism, and the quality of questioning all dogmas. The word in Hebrew means 'adversary' and so we are each 'Satans' to the doctrines that would have people use faith instead of reason to understand the universe in which we live. Our goal is to enjoy this, the only life we have and not waste it in anticipation of a mythical afterlife or an imagined apocalypse." - News 31 May, XLI A.S. in Reguards to The Satanic High Mass that happened on 6/6/6

Flesh and Bones_______________“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ~ Charles Bukowski

Although I have found Wikipedia to be an invaluable source for trivial bits and pieces of information, such as “how to speak 733+” or “what is a pirate?”, I don’t feel that it is a satisfactory replacement for real live books. There are also outright errors in Wikipedia, and it should not be used as a sole source of reference when researching anything of great importance. If you sited something published by a major university such as Cambridge or Oxford, people might be more inclined to take you seriously. I wish you success in your efforts.

"As I have stated, the paradox where more people are "talking" dark forces up, down, and sideways, but fewer than ever are actually living as night people, provokes speculation. The moral here is that when everybody's talking, very few are doing. More time is spent comparing notes with aficionados than in enjoying the hobby per se."A.S.L. / T.D.N.

Quote:No offense, but do you have any sources? Because this is not what I have read, and I have looked for it for a good hour.

An hour? That's what I call extensive research!!!!

My sources are basically a lifetime collecting information about Ancient Egypt. Let's say it’s a hobby of mine. The specific topic of "the Jews in Egypt" have been discussed extensively by the world's most renown Egyptologists in a series of articles published on KMT an Egyptology magazine I have been subscribed for the last 10 years.

There is also a Time Life documentary (I have it somewhere in ancient VHS format) in which the interviewed Archeologists talk about how political and religious implications makes this specific topic taboo (specially in the Middle East) since publishing the results of the excavations would mean to challenge not just a myth but the national identity of Israel.

If you want I can check my books and give you more specific information of authors and publications you can look up.

_________________________You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.Robert A. Heinlein